Jessica Garcia, a former student in the lab is now a medical student at University of Washington School of Medicine. Last week she participated in her white coat ceremony, and we are so, very proud of her.
PI, Bryan William Jones delivered an invited seminar today at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) / National Eye Institute (NEI) today on Retinas, How Are They Wired? How Does Wiring Change In Disease?
PI, Bryan William Jones delivered a seminar at the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2021 meeting today on Tools and Approaches for Assembly, Review, and Analysis of Large-Scale Electron Microscopy.
Postdoctoral fellow, Crystal Sigulinsky delivered a talk today at the Retinal Circuits Symposium on Classical mixed synapses and other electrical plus chemical synapse topologies in the mammalian retina.
PI, Bryan William Jones delivered a Distinguished Lecture Series talk today at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear, Harvard, on Retinal Connectomics and Pathoconnectomics.
We have a new collaborative manuscript out in iOVS, Primary Cilia in Amacrine Cells in Retinal Development. (pdf here)
Authors: Ke Ning; Brent E. Sendayen; Tia J. Kowal; Biao Wang; Bryan W. Jones @BWJones; Yang Hu; and Yang Sun.
Abstract:
Purpose: Primary cilia are conserved organelles found in polarized cells within the eye that regulate cell growth, migration, and differentiation. Although the role of cilia in photoreceptors is well-studied, the formation of cilia in other retinal cell types has received little attention. In this study, we examined the ciliary profile focused on the inner nuclear layer of retinas in mice and rhesus macaque primates.
Methods: Retinal sections or flatmounts from Arl13b-Cetn2 tg transgenic mice were immunostained for cell markers (Pax6, Sox9, Chx10, Calbindin, Calretinin, ChaT, GAD67, Prox1, TH, and vGluT3) and analyzed by confocal microscopy. Primate retinal sections were immunostained for ciliary and cell markers (Pax6 and Arl13b). Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and ERGs were used to assess visual function of Vift88 mice.
Results: During different stages of mouse postnatal eye development, we found that cilia are present in Pax6-positive amacrine cells, which were also observed in primate retinas. The cilia of subtypes of amacrine cells in mice were shown by immunostaining and electron microscopy. We also removed primary cilia from vGluT3 amacrine cells in mouse and found no significant vision defects. In addition, cilia were present in the outer limiting membrane, suggesting that a population of Müller glial cells forms cilia.
Conclusions: We report that several subpopulations of amacrine cells in inner nuclear layers of the retina form cilia during early retinal development in mice and primates.
PI, Bryan William Jones delivered a talk today at the MICROCOM II, 24 Hours of Life Science, on Large-Scale Transmission Electron Microscopy and Connectomics.
PI, Bryan William Jones gave a talk yesterday to the NSF NeuroNex working group on Synapses, Gap junctions, Adherens, and Tight Junctions and their role in connectomics.
Will post the video of that talk here, if and when it becomes available.
Thanks to friend and colleague Uri @manorlaboratory for screenshotting in the middle of the talk.
Congratulations to Selena Sullivan, an undergraduate in the laboratory for earning the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award at the University of Utah, School of Medicine for 2021.
PI, Bryan William Jones gave a talk at ARVO yesterday, in a special session on retinal degeneration and plasticity, unfortunately virtually, but it is the right thing to do in a pandemic. That makes effectively two years in a row where we have not traveled to see colleagues at our vision meetings. That said, the meetings are still productive.